I'm very pleased to announce that the Nonprofit Starter Pack is released today as an open source software project! We've heard feedback from our community of users and partners and decided opening up the code and processes around the Nonprofit Starter Pack was the way to maximize the benefit to the nonprofits we serve. In this post I'll let you know why we're open sourcing, what we hope to accomplish, and how we're going about it. I'll also be asking you to join in our effort to help nonprofits using Salesforce.com be as effective as possible.

But first, some background...

In November of 2008 the Salesforce.com Foundation released the Nonprofit Starter Pack--a set of customizations to Saleforce CRM that model some key nonprofit business practices. The Nonprofit Starter Pack will:

* provide a frictionless way for a small/med nonprofit organization to get up on Salesforce.com in an intuitive way
* be a way to catalyze our partner community and build a viable ecosystem of products for nonprofits on Salesforce.com
* help make integrations more plentiful
* make things easier for integrators to work with Nonprofit organizations
* serve the smaller organizations first
* not necessarily be the solution for all organizations, particularly large, more sophisticated organizations

The Nonprofit Starter Pack was chosen by over 1,100 nonprofits when they received their donation of Salesforce CRM. That's quite a reach in a very short time! We have added staff (me) to help support the Nonprofit Starter Pack, but we're not satisfied. We'll never have enough internal resources to advance the ball as quickly as we'd like. So we're making it possible for others to join us in this effort.

In open sourcing this project we're doing a number of things.

We are putting our code in public for all to see/use

We've created a project website that includes the code of the Nonprofit Starter Pack in a source code repository under an open source license. This will allow anyone interested in the Nonprofit Starter Pack to see the internals of what's going on in the code. The code can be taken and installed in any Salesforce.com instance to be studied and changed. We're fully expecting that people will look at our code and suggest changes and bug fixes that we haven't thought of. If you're a developer, have at it and let us know what you think. Digging into the Nonprofit Starter Pack is a great way to expand your understanding of Apex and VisualForce--take a look at the code and you'll likely learn something.

We're opening up our processes

The project site has links to updated documentation that has links to all the packages, release notes, install instructions, known limitations, and much more. The project site also has a public issue tracker. As soon as we know about a bug, we put it in the issue tracker, so you'll know what problems are outstanding. If you find a bug you can submit it directly and get email updates as the issue is worked. Want a new feature? Suggest it in the issue tracker and others can comment on it, too.

We're deepening our communication

There are three new communication channels for the Nonprofit Starter Pack. First, an email lists for announcements about the project and the packages. Second, a discussion group for developers working with the Nonprofit Starter Pack. And most importantly, a discussion group for nonprofit users who have the Nonprofit Starter Pack installed, or are evaluating it. We haven't had a good forum for questions specific to use of the Nonprofit Starter Pack, so I'm particularly excited about the formation of this group.

We're asking for people to join us

All this opening up will allow people to more easily help us improve the Nonprofit Starter Pack--that's the whole point of this effort. Come join us. Help us find bugs. Help us choose new functionality to build. Help us with our documentation. Help us help nonprofits change the world.

We are retaining ownership, authority, and accountability for the Nonprofit Starter Pack

The Salesforce.com Foundation is responsible for the Nonprofit Starter Pack, and we aren't changing that with this opening up of our processes. We as asking for help and input, and pushing as much as possible out to the community. And we're retaining final decision making around the Nonprofit Starter Pack. We will strive to be transparent in the decisions we make, and be clear in communication of those decisions.

So join us in this effort!

Here are some things you can do today:

* Visit the Project Site and see what we've built
* Join the Nonprofit Starter Pack mailing lists (Announcements,Developers,Users)
* Take a look at the issue tracker and see what bugs we're dealing with, and have already fixed
* Take a look at our code and use the Google Code tools to comment on it

We're doing all of this to better support our broad community. Let us know what you think and share with us your ideas for how we might do things better! Together we can help nonprofits be more effective in achieving their missions by making the Nonprofit Starter Pack the best it can be.